Testing new Mass. Republican social profile tool

I am testing a social networking tool to help Republicans in Massachusetts. (It is called, ‘Mass of Elephants’) I would like to get people’s feedback on it. The purpose is to permit greater cooperation among Republican activists and volunteers across the state. It will be a place to have a personal profile, and groups that will hold useful pages and documents for broad consumption. It is different than Facebook and can do many things for us that Facebook cannot. It is also very different from RMG as there will be no blogging or opinions in there. Just profiles, conversations, and resources. The goal is to be useful, not interesting. Lastly, this is my own experiment. It is not affiliated with any organization or the state Republican party.

The site is here: http://elephants.elgg.com Please register, fill out our profile, create a group, and leave some feedback about what you think. Good news: You can automatically create an account with your Facebook or Twitter credentials, and log in with those from then on. Really – no new account needed. Just click on the Facebook or Twitter button on the login page. There is lots of documentation in there about what it is for and how it can be used. Feel free to forward the URL to anyone else you want. Let me give a few potential uses…

– Profiles contain tags for skills and towns. You will be able to find Republicans from your town and also people with certain skills (tech, running for office, fundraising) that can help you.

– You can figure out who that person was who you met at a Republican event, where they are from, what skills they have, and follow up with them.

– You can create a group for a town or topic and put broadly-useful information in there that people can use.

I believe that a site like this, as it grows over time, becomes a huge directory of Republicans, where they live, what they can do, and how they can help. Imagine all the ways that could be useful. We need to get more out of our 11% in this state. Enabling this basic person-to-person collaboration would go a long way toward that goal.